EXCLUSIVE: Fallout from Rod Frazier inquiry hits home

Thursday

Apr 11, 2013 at 8:21 AM

It took weeks for a girl's family to decide to write the letter that claimed the Manatee High assistant football coach groped her, sent her hundreds of text messages and asked for a picture of her naked.

By CHRIS ANDERSON

The widespread fallout has now reached their shower drain — the mother and daughter are tracking who has lost the most hair since the letter was written.

The decision to write the letter alleging potentially illegal behavior by a Manatee High School assistant football coach took two arduous weeks to make, and the parents carefully considered the ramifications and repercussions during each restless night.

They worried if their daughter would be deemed credible. She is still in high school, and it would be her words against those of older adults. Could she handle the scrutiny and the backlash if she came forward? Could they?

"I think every emotion a person could have we went through in trying to make that decision," the girl's mother said.

Once the decision was made to write the three-page letter, the words seemed to come easy and it took the girl about 30 minutes to complete the first draft.

The girl claimed in the letter that Manatee High coach Rod Frazier groped her, sent her hundreds of text messages and asked for a picture of her naked.

In January the mother brought the letter to the office of Manatee High Principal Don Sauer and it eventually sparked an investigation by the Bradenton Police Department.

The BPD has now recommended to the state that Frazier be charged with multiple counts of battery and that Assistant Superintendent Bob Gagnon, former district investigator Debra Horne and Manatee High assistant principals Matthew Kane and Gregg Faller be charged with failure to report child abuse and providing false information to police during an investigation.

Even after the Penn State scandal took awareness to soaring heights, the Frazier case has once again raised the question of why people might not report abuse — especially school administrators — and what can happen when they do.

Manatee High, over the last two months, has become a "tense" place of "how well do you know your neighbor," according to one employee who has left specific items on his computer keyboard to see if they remain in the same place the next morning.

The girl's mother, meanwhile, says she finds herself looking over her shoulder in the grocery store parking lot and does not sleep much anymore.

The girl has suffered serious headaches, often drives different cars to her new school and fears she will not graduate if Frazier is found to have done nothing wrong, as his attorney has maintained.

"It's like he's stolen parts of her life from her," the girl's mother said. "This makes a child have to grow up quickly."

Loyalty wins out

Nearly 25 percent of children in confirmed cases of abuse will recant their stories because of backlash, according to Amy Russell, deputy director of the National Child Protection Training Center in Minnesota.

Though research varies, Russell says at least 60 percent of mandated reporters do not report any type of abuse, and that number could be higher.

Not reporting to the state hotline in Florida is now a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

Russell said loyalty is a major factor in deciding whether to report. It could be loyalty toward a person or an institution.

"I think people try to balance loyalty and justice when trying to figure out whether to report," she said.

"Often times there is a loyalty to an abuser and people have concerns like, 'If I make this report will it ruin the person's life?' and the justice part is 'What about the child being maltreated?'

"A lot of times the loyalty side wins out."

Russell said people also take a "pass the buck" mentality when it comes to reporting.

"People think, 'Someone else probably has more information than this so I'm not going to say anything. Let someone else say it,'" she said.

"It can be this big conspiracy of silence."

Manatee High has been the flagship school in the county for decades and has excelled in sports, especially football.

When Gagnon was principal, he was lauded for taking Manatee from a D grade to an A in only one year. In fall 2011, Manatee added a fifth state championship to its storied football program.

"It goes back to that balance between loyalty and justice," Russell said. "It's not just about an individual, but 'Do we want to besmirch the name of an institution when they have done so many good things? Will this one bad thing ruin the entire institution?'"

In the long-term an institution's reputation can be enhanced in the eyes of the public because it has reported abuse, said Jennifer Dritt, executive director of the Florida Council against Sexual Violence.

"That's what people want in leadership," Dritt said. "They want their officials to do the right thing."

Barclay Kirkland, a Bradenton dentist, said he saw Frazier act inappropriately with several female weightlifters during meets when Frazier was coach. Kirkland said he went to school administrators, who were uncooperative.

"You talk to these people and they let you talk," Kirkland said. "But within two minutes you know you've totally wasted your time, so much so that you're angry.

"They're like all in it together. It's like, 'I got your back and you've got mine. It's like a bad culture."

'Kids never win'

The girl who wrote the letter said Frazier befriended her at the start of her sophomore year, and the height of the alleged inappropriate behavior was in the fall of her junior year.

Midway through that year it stopped.

She said she did not say anything then because she felt her words would not carry much weight.

"I never said anything because the students know and there are plenty of teachers who know," she said. "So if they all know and nobody says anything about it, I didn't think it was a big deal if I said anything about it."

She said she also felt defeated while deciding whether to say something.

"Everyone believes the teacher, everyone believes the administrator, so they can lie and get away with it," she said. "You can tell the truth and it doesn't matter because you're a kid and they're an adult.

"It's an adult against a kid. The adult always wins. Kids never win."

Once the BPD became aware of the district's investigation into Frazier in February through a Herald-Tribune story, it began a probe of its own.

For at least three weeks, police detectives interviewed teachers, administrators, employees and students at Manatee High during school hours.

An email sent by Sauer instructed teachers not to speak to the media and several teachers said they feared backlash if they did. Many did not return calls from the Herald-Tribune.

The atmosphere inside the school, especially early on, was described by an employee as "very intense and tightlipped."

Kirkland, the Bradenton dentist, was one of the few people who allowed his name to be used by the Herald-Tribune, but even then he feared it would come at a price.

"There are consequences that you'll never even know," he said. "I guarantee you there are people who won't come here if our name was put in the paper against Frazier. There's no question about that.

"But a person has to stand up for what's right."

The mother of the girl said "this stuff has consumed our lives" and that she sleeps about four hours a night.

"We're very concerned about repercussions from the football team, the coaches and the entire school system," she said.

She said she texts her daughter every hour to check on her.

"You're protective nature kicks in," the mother said.

The mother said her daughter no longer plays her favorite sport, does not want to attend her senior prom and has suffered physically and emotionally from the stress.

"Her stomach is upset," the mother said. "It's tied in knots. She's having headaches. She doesn't want to get up and go to school in the morning. I don't want to say she's withdrawing from the world, but she really wishes she could crawl underneath a rock until this is over with."